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Saturday, August 20, 2011

Castles on the Rhine

I meant to add more details to the airplane photo post but here is how it went:
10 minutes before boarding I decided to post a picture for the kids. I try to log into blogger and forget my password. Try again: Fail. Try again, finally right. 7 minutes to go, the people are standing in line all around me.
Start a post. Try to upload a picture: Fail. Can't do it that way on a phone.
Quickly set up my blog to accept emailed posts like I did when we were in China.
Type email with details, try to attach a picture: Fail.
Board the plane.
Realize I must open the picture and email it that way. Type up a post with details and hit send: Fail.
Watch the flight attendant yell at people for not getting seated quick enough and say "we must go, just sit down and we'll fix it once we're in the air." Listen to the pilot come over the speakers and say "we must depart, sit down, turn off cell phones."
Try furiously one last time to send the picture, type as few words as possible and hit send.
13 hours later when I finally had internet again I checked to see it really did post and only once: Success!

So, for the details. J has a conference for work in Germany this week so I decided to come along as his +1. We left a few days early to enjoy some sites together and our children are with wonderful Meme back home.

We flew overnight and arrived in Frankfurt around 7:30 am but jet lag seriously kicked our butts so that first day was spent walking around like zombies and crying over lunch because the only choices available were all fried food. Seriously, it was that bad. I made it 25 hours before falling asleep but it has proven to be worth it because today I was up at 4 am and still haven't fall asleep and it's now 11 pm.

Today we took a tour with a local company to visit a castle on the Rhine river along with a couple wine tastings, boat ride, lunch and a gondola ride. It was all so very cool and awe inspiring except the gondola ride; that nearly made me wet my pants. And then when we got to the top and I found the bathroom I had to pay to use it and I didn't have the right kind of coins. ACK!

This is the castle we toured; it is privately owned now by a family and is open for tours and also has a cafe.
After the tour we enjoyed a piece of plum cake on the patio and this was our view.

Pictures from around the castle:

The basket was used in ancient times as a punishment for criminals; they'd hoist them into the basket and leave them there for awhile.

These are two that we saw on our boat tour. I lost count after awhile but I think we saw 8 castles today.

One more interesting stories from today is that this castle sitting up above this small town on the Rhine river is currently owned by a Japanese businessman; he has his helicopter fly him from the Frankfurt airport to his castle when he comes.

I only took pictures of the gondola ride with my cell phone because I was too scared to bend over and get the camera out of the backpack. That might rock the cable car and well, I was already breathing shallow.

We Adopted!

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Life around here is chaotic but eventually you grow to love the chaos and can't imagine life any other way.

We move. We move a lot and somehow I've made a home in 7 rental houses in 5 states within 9 years. Follow the math? We purchased our first home two years ago (another move!) and since raising three kids who are less than 4 years apart isn't enough of a challenge we decided to renovate most of the house shortly after moving in. Then we got started on our adoption process. We just simply can't sit still.

I have a wonderful husband who takes most of my stress away (or at least tries) and we have 4 great kids, with our last child being added to our family through the journey of adoption. It's loud, it's messy, it's chaotic and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I started this blog to share a little of our lives with those that enjoy following the chaos. Good luck.